Special report: Battle for Damascus a bloody snipers’ war amid the rubble

Mortally wounded by a sniper, a rebel fighter is comforted by a colleague. Picture: Reuters/Goran Tomasevic

GORAN TOMASEVIC

00:00Thursday 21 February 2013

In words and pictures from the frontline, Goran Tomasevic tells of Syria’s brutal stalemate

Rebel fighters in Dam-ascus are disciplined, skilled and brave. In a month on the frontline, I saw them defend a stretch of suburbs in the Syrian capital, mount complex mass attacks, manage logistics, treat their wounded – and die before my eyes.

Rebels attack a Syrian Army base in the Arabeen neighbourhood of Damascus. Picture: Reuters/Goran Tomasevic

But as constant, punishingly accurate, mortar, tank and sniper fire attested, president Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers on the other side, often just a room or a grenade toss away, are also well drilled, courageous – and much better armed.

So while the troops were unable to dislodge brigades of the Free Syrian Army from devastated and depopulated neighbourhoods just east of the city centre, there seems little immediate prospect of the rebels overrunning Assad’s stronghold. The result is bloody stalemate.

I watched both sides mount assaults, some trying to gain just a house or two, others for bigger prizes, only to be forced back by sharpshooters, mortars or sprays of machine gun fire.

As in the ruins of Beirut, Sarajevo or Stalingrad, it is a snipers’ war; men stalk their fellow man down telescopic sights, hunting a glimpse of flesh, an eyeball peering from a crack, use lures and decoys to draw their prey into giving themselves away.

A makeshift rifle-grenade. Picture: Reuters/Goran Tomasevic

Fighting is at such close quarters that on one occasion a rebel patrol stumbled into an army unit inside a building; hand grenades deafened us and shrapnel shredded plaster, a sudden clatter of Kalashnikov cartridges and bullets coming across the cramped space gave way in seconds to the groans of the wounded.

From 14 January, having reached Damascus from Lebanon by way of undercover opposition networks, I spent four weeks in Ain Tarma, Mleha, Zamalka, Irbin and Harasta – rebel-held areas forming a wedge whose apex lies less than a mile to the east of the walled Old City, with its ancient mosques, churches and bazaars.

Once bustling suburbs are all but empty of life, bar the fighters; six months of combat, of shelling and occasional air strikes have broken open apartment blocks to the winter winds of the high Syrian plateau and choked the streets with rubble.

Battling the cold in woollen ski-hats or chequered keffiyeh scarves, a few thousand unshaven men defend barricades and strongpoints, served by cars ferrying ammunition and rations and led by commanders using handheld radios and messenger runners.

A rebel fighter runs for cover during the firing of a mortar towards the Presidential palace

Days are punctuated by regular halts for prayer in a conflict, now 23 months old, that has become increasingly one pitting Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority, stiffened by Islamist radicals, against Alawites led by Assad; they have support from Iran, from whose Shiite Islam their faith is derived.

Typical of the frontline routine was an attack that a couple of dozen men of the brigade Tahrir al-Sham mounted in Ain Tarma on 30 January, aiming to take over or at least damage an army checkpoint up the lane.

I photographed one two-man fire team crouch against a breeze-block garden wall, about 50 metres from their target.

In blue jeans, trainers and muffled against a morning chill, their role was to wait for comrades to hit the army position with rocket-propelled grenades then rake the soldiers with their rifles as they were flushed out into the open.

A shop-window dummy becomes a head as a rebel tries to make a sniper reveal their location

There was little to make a sound in the abandoned streets. The attackers whispered to each other under their breath. Then two shots rang out. One of the two riflemen, heavy set and balding, screamed in pain and collapsed back on the tarmac. The day’s assault was going wrong before it even started.

Another fighter crept over to help. Realising the casualty was gravely hurt, two more came up and they dragged the man across the street, to relative safety.

Battlefield first-aid is helpless in the face of single shot to the belly. The man died in minutes. But there was no time to mourn – the army was alerted to the squad’s presence.

The rebels stepped up attacks last month, trying to weaken Assad’s grip on the outlying neighbourhoods surrounding the fortified centre of Damascus and pushing across the main ring road in the neighbourhood of Jobar.

Among the boldest offensive moves I saw was an assault by what appeared to be several hundred fighters on a sprawling army barracks in the Irbin district. It was striking for the level of co-ordination it displayed among numerous units which, lacking uniforms, donned bandannas in bright pinks, reds and oranges to identify their loyalties and reduce the risk of “friendly fire”.

One group also brought up a Soviet-built T-72 tank to take part in the attack, crewed by men who evidently had been trained in the army.

A rebel fighter screams in pain as he is hit by shrapnel from a hand grenade

The infantry skirmish for control of the barracks involved teams of fighters stealing up to a two-metre perimeter wall that stretched for hundreds of metres around.

On a misty morning, they tried to maintain surprise, but once the shooting began there was no turning back, no sign these men might recently have been fearful civilians. They poured rifle fire through gaps in the wall, tossed grenades over it and did what they could to avoid incoming rounds.

One man poked the head of a store-window mannequin, fixed on a pole, into a hole in the wall, hoping a sniper could be tempted to betray his position. It was a wise precaution. I saw another man picked off later as he aimed through a similar gap.

By afternoon, helped by their tank, they were inside the compound, looking for enemies, intelligence and, especially, more weapons to carry off. They knew the position itself would be hard to hold – too big and open and vulnerable to air strikes.

The bulk of the rebel armoury is made up of AK-47s. Most rebels have one, though not always many magazines of bullets. I also saw US-made M4 carbines and Austrian Steyr assault rifles. Western-allied Sunni Arab leaders in the Gulf have been arming the fighters.

The rebels also have rocket-propelled grenades and some heavier anti-tank weapons – at least enough to discourage their opponents from trying to roll their armour through their lines. Capable of improvising, I saw men use a shotgun to blast a fuse-lit, home-made grenade at their enemy.

Further from the fighting, some vestiges of ordinary life goes on. Often without electricity or running water, residents try to survive; a few shops sell vegetables, or meat kebabs.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

The Scotsman provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at The Scotsman regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website The Scotsman requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.